Electric vehicle tipping point predicted for 2017

Paul Scott, a founding member of Plug In America and now an LA Nissan Leaf salesman, has long been a leader and visionary in the electric vehicle space. Speaking recently at the 2013 EV Summit at the Google campus in Mountain View, CA, Scott noted to hundreds of EV owners that he saw 2017 as being a big turning point for the EV industry.

Notably, that’s basically what hundreds of CleanTechnica readers told us in a recent EV survey.

Of course, 2017 isn’t just some random year. 2017 is the year Elon Musk has promised to bring to market an “sort of affordable” EV that should be about half the price of the Tesla Model S (~$40,000) but still awesome and with at least 200 miles of range (which most of us now think will be called the Tesla Model E).

Naturally, EV batteries are also projected to come down considerably by the time, making mass-market EVs like the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt even more slap-me-in-the-face-obvious choices than they are today.

Other than talking about this 2017 turning point, Paul also highlighted one of the big turning points we just crossed. Torque News writes:

Talking about the US sales success of plug-in hybrids and all electric cars, Paul Scott noted there are now over 100,000 plug-in electric vehicles driving the roads of America, including both plug-in hybrid and all electric cars. We’re about 2 1/2 years past the introduction of the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt, and about 1 year past the introduction of the Tesla Model S. Prior to the introduction of these electrified cars, there were only a few thousand electric cars in total, including Tesla Roadsters, the remaining Gen1 Toyota RAV4 EV’s, Ford Range EV’s, and several thousand home-built electric conversion cars. Jumping to a population of over 100,000 plug-in electric cars is a phenomenal leap…. [sic]

It is quite phenomenal. But I think it’s pretty obvious that we ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

This article was originally published on CleanTechnica. Reproduced with permission